Some crazy smart people over at MIT collaborated with a Danish design group to make a house that moves on legs.

The house, which reportedly can move up to five kilometers per hour, comes equipped with all the necessities for a personal dwelling. “The house is ten feet high, powered by solar panels, and is outfitted with a kitchen, toilet, bed, and wood stove.” What makes this different than a traditional motor home is that it can pass over objects where a tire might have a problem. It can reportedly “turn left and right, move forward and back, and even change height as needed.” In a sense, a true mobile home.

The hope is to eventually create a dwelling capable of climbing hills and navigating over rough terrain. They even hope to build a model which could also float on water for both land and sea adventures.

But is this a practical invention?

There’s no doubt that something like this could come in handy down the road. The legs, not the actual dwelling, is what is important in this device. You could build thousands of slightly smaller ones with stronger legs able to move buildings to new locations or for safe demolition. Supplies could reach far locations such as a backpackers high camp (think of all the empty oxygen containers at the top of Mount Everest that could be removed) or troops in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The mobile home idea is pretty wacky, but the legs do offer a glimpse into the future of moving heavy objects. Heck, even the first airplane looked pretty weird.

My urge to silliness notwithstanding, I can see this being modified as a proof-of-concept as an air-dropable rescue platform of some kind for instance.

Legs that can lift the platform itself ought to be adaptable to survivor lift mechanisms as well.

It wouldn’t work in all terrain of course (neither do mis-leadingly named ATV’s), but I can envision something developed from this operating in many unimproved terrain situations that would stop wheeled or even tracked vehicles.

A lot is going to depend on how much interior volume the motive source allows, I think, as well as the technology that source will power.